


look what you made me do

by brandflakeeee



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: A redo of an old fic, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:35:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22162657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brandflakeeee/pseuds/brandflakeeee
Summary: sometimes you can never really escape the ones who matter most.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/Missy
Comments: 1
Kudos: 30





	look what you made me do

Ash scatters through the air, even though the acrid smoke and snarling fires haven’t reached this far yet. Were it not for the distant sounds of a war raging on, one could nearly mistake the ash for snow. It’s foreign in this forever land of greenery – too green – and scars the area further and further from it’s intended use for a farm.

There’s a ripple between the trees and a loud snap of energy that echoes against the sturdy trunks of the woods – hardly out of place for the cacophony raging beyond into the fields. It seems the air itself has split apart and dumped the frame of a slender blonde woman onto the carpet of underbrush. She gasps, startled; vortex manipulators are extremely tricky and the travel is unsettling – she’s never liked to rely on it, but she isn’t willing to risk the TARDIS being stuck in this hell a second time.

The Doctor stands, the machine strapped to her wrist burning warmly against her skin. It’s disorienting and somewhat painful being here, this ship damned to hell, the souls stranded aboard stuffed into metal casings. She knows how this plays out, and cannot risk interfering. Not more than she already is. Sticks and other debris crack beneath her boots as she tries to get her bearings, trying to remember just where the seven hells the lifts are. She’s tried to get as close as possible, hoping to avoid her own face some distance away where the sounds are coming from, the horrific twisting of metal and the putrid smell of smoke fogging the air. It reminds her of the first days of the Time War, the distant noise and smoke and ash and hell raining down upon them.

But now is not the time to dwell.

She darts through a small thicket, fighting her own memories. It’s always a strange feeling, being close to one’s previous face. The memories and thoughts trickle strangely unbidden into her mind and she has to force them away. She cannot let him know she’s here, or he’ll do something stupid. Really, he already has because she’s here anyway and – it’s complicated, and she prefers to put her mind to the task at hand.

There is purple and flesh dotted against the green.

“Oh, what a mess you’ve done to yourself, Kosh.” Her voice is a whisper as she kneels to the Time Lady strewn across the ground. There isn’t much time; the world is ending around them, thanks to her previous face determined to play martyr. She doesn’t regret it, but it’s given her very little wiggle room with her sly plan, who’s origins she blames entirely on Bill and the water-girlfriend.

“ _You’re like Missy now, then, yeah?”_

_Thirteen tilts her head; she’s still admiring herself in the reflection of a TARDIS monitor. The hair, the eyes, the face – this body is fresh and new and while she still feels like a warrior, like the Doctor, she knows her terms are on different ground. Her battles fought with kindness, compassion, and a softer frame than the angles and sharp edges of the Scottish one before her._

_“What, evil?”_

_“You were a man, now you’ve gone all girl. I like it.”_

_Heather makes a noise, and Bill laughs. Even the Doctor grins despite herself, and finds a smile looks rather lovely on this face._

_“Where is Missy?” She asks suddenly, and she doesn’t know why. But she does see the looks the two exchange across from her, and there is a worrying pit developing somewhere under her ribs. She can’t tell if it’s her hearts or her stomach bottoming out. Missy was fine. She’d made it off. She’d been certain of it._

_Hadn’t she?_

_“Didn’t she leave with Mr. Egomania?”_

_Again, the looks, and the Doctor has a vague sick feeling._

_“I think she was trying to help.” Heather says suddenly, slowly. The Doctor’s gaze snaps to her as she continues. “In her own way. She fought with him.”_

Fighting with the Master is never truly a smart thing to do. Oh, Missy, the Doctor thinks, and knows the news that Heather is likely to impart. She doesn’t ask how Heather knows. She’s learned not to ask questions. Not yet. Things are still new and fresh and complicated and it’s all a jumble in her mind, but the thought of Missy lingers at the front of it.

Amber regeneration energy still clings to her fingers – she’d put it off for far too long and leftover energy is still working it’s way through her system. Those hands rest in the space between Missy’s hearts, lingering until the Doctor can feel them fluttering. Clinging to life. She is unmoving, not breathing, but dying can take Time Lords days. Weeks, even.

Guilt coils like a snake in her belly as she imparts the energy through her fingers, through the fabric of Missy’s dress and into her being. A mission to prove her worth, and in the end the Doctor had abandoned her. Like Skaro. Like Gallifrey. How hard Missy had tried, and how hard the Doctor had pushed her. To the point that death had been more preferable to the vault? Then again, she’d gone far beyond suicidal, straight into a new level of self destruction. Missy’s fingers were still stained with tell-tale red-orange blood and the Doctor recalls the vague feel of metal in grabbing her hand some time ago. Less than an hour on Missy’s part. Ages for her own.

Again, she cannot dwell. There isn’t time. Not now, not yet.

Amber regeneration energy seeps from her fingers, into Missy's chest and deeper, settling at the near fatal injury near her spine. The Doctor winces.

Satisfied Missy isn’t going to die in the next few moments, she wraps an arm across her and one beneath her, half shielding her. It’s an awkward hug, but she can’t risk losing her. Not when she’s gone through this much trouble. She has to lean forward to press the button on her vortex manipulator with her nose, but it does the trick.

Time and space swallow them up, and the world explodes.

\- - -

" _Koschei, wait up!"_

_"Hurry up!"_

_"You said you'd wait for me! You've -- you're taller!"_

_"Quit whining on, Theta. Just get up here. The view's worth it, I swear."_

_"I'll get there when I get there."_

_"I'm growing facial hair waiting up here."_

_"Just --- oh, that's not even possible!"_

_"Come on!"_

\- - -

Whispers invade every corner of her mind, soft and insistent. She isn’t sure if they’re past or future, if they’re real or not. It’s giving her a headache, she knows, a dull throb that starts at the back of her skull and radiates out into a permanent weave of pain across her frame. Everything is aching, now that she considers it. Aching and burning. The feeling is both familiar and not.

Breathing is too arduous a task, so she stops. She tests a few outer limbs; wriggling her fingers, and she’s surprised to feel softness. It’s all around her, enveloping her in a strange sort of state.

It isn’t dirt and mud, and for that she’s grateful.

She can’t open her eyes, not immediately. They feel like lead weights, firmly pulling her down. Deep.

Down. Deep. Dark. Sleep.

Sleep. She wants to sleep. That sounds like the most marvelous idea.

So she does. And dreams.

\- - -

When the world shifts around her, she notices. It pricks the edges of this skin, this new environment. But there is still some softness to it. Is she dying? She’s never properly done the death bit before, so she’s in uncharted territory.

She remembers.

The Doctor. Stupid, proud, Theta.

She remembers, and tries to move. There are things to do, like stop him and –

\--her whole body protests and the pain is back, but more faded. Still, the sharp nature of it shoot straight up her spine and even Missy cannot fight it. She grits her teeth and when she suddenly feels hands on her, the lead weights on her eyelids finally seem to give up their battle. The world is an alarming array of colour, dimmed by the face that hovers above.

A pale hand shoots out to grasp the wrist of the weird freak who thinks she can presume to touch her and stops. Warm floods her hand, crawling up her fingers into her palm and wrist. Her senses return and she can suddenly see beyond. She meets the gaze of this not-stranger and holds it evenly.

_Theta_.

The name cries out like a scream in her mind and she can see her Doctor flinch. Still, there is silence in the air that hangs between them – the Doctor’s hands on Missy, Missy’s hand wrapped around one of her wrists. It’s an impasse, and for a moment Missy thinks this is some strange reality. It cannot be real. She is dead, and her mind is playing terrible games. Or worse, her younger self is playing such a cruel joke not even Missy can devise.

“It’s all right.” This not-stranger-Doctor speaks, and Missy believes her.

She knows those eyes, even if the voice and the face are different. Her Doctor.

“You need to rest. It’s all right.” She says again, and even inch of Missy wants to fight. It’s ingrained, an instinct, but something else takes over. A different thought, a different instinct. Cultivated in her time in the vault, perhaps, or perhaps it’s something else entirely.

Okay.

She sleeps.

The Doctor stays.

\- - -

The teacup trembles in her hand, and the Doctor has to set it down to keep from sloshing it down her front. She feels a mix of emotions, and her new brain can’t sort them out properly. This brain is different and while she has her memories (most of them), her thoughts (most of them), and everything else (some of it), she can’t gauge her own reactions until they’ve already happened. This is not the angry-Scot or the naïve-bowtie or anything else before. It’s new and old all at once. She wants to scream, dig her nails into her palms until they bleed.

But that doesn’t help. It never has.

Curled on a step of the TARDIS as the ship hums around her, she stares across at the dimly lit console.

“Did I do the right thing?” She asks aloud to the ship – (and this voice! It’s so strange!) – who gives a faint prod to the back of her mind in return. The Doctor gives a half grin, patting the step beside her as if to comfort the TARDIS.

“I know you’re worried. I am too. But – she didn’t deserve that. No one deserves that.” A pause. “She would’ve done it for me.” Another pause. “I think.” Hum. “I hope.”

She runs a hand through her hair, fluffing it about to try and steady and steel her nerves. Satisfied, she picks up her tea and takes a tentative sip, testing how she likes this flavor (she’s tried seven hundred fourty-seven so far and they all taste horrific). She likes this flavor. A bit bitter, a bit sweet. A perfect balance. She’ll have to label the tin.

“I have a promise to keep.” Thirteen muses, again aloud, her only listener the faithful TARDIS. “I mean, I don’t think it’s void. I think it’s still a thing. I have to keep it, I promised. Death doesn’t just kill that contract, and I mean . . . I don’t have anything harrowing to do for a while. It couldn’t hurt? And she had been flying you, so if I needed to take her somewhere I could just quantum lock the controls and . . . .”

The TARDIS gives a sharp jab that has her rubbing the back of her neck.

“Yes, thank you for your input. Noted. Go back to sleep and leave me be if you’re not going to be helpful.” The Doctor scowls vaguely at the console, which dims further after a few minutes and leaves the whole room bathed in a soft blue light.

“I did the right thing.” She says again, to herself, a quiet whisper. She doesn’t know if she’s trying to convince her ship or herself more.

But there is more to her saving than her vow. There’s always been more. Vaguely, she thinks her regeneration might have slapped some fashion of sense into her brain. She thinks Missy would have done it herself had she’d been able.

_She’d been coming to help you. She tried to KILL herself for you._

Only injure, her mind reminds itself. Her younger face had been a step ahead – thankfully Thirteen is mindful to be just another ahead than either of them. There is good to Missy, she knows. Somewhere. The idea that she had even entertained the idea of helping, of standing by her side, is proof enough of that. Even still, spending an eternity in a vault isn’t going to continue nurturing that idea. She needs a better one.

First, she needs Missy to wake up.

It’s not a conversation she wants to have, but it’s coming. When she wakes, there will be words. Missy will probably call her stupid, among other things, for wasting regeneration energy and time and efforts on her.

The longer she considers it, however, the more the Doctor doesn’t regret it.

She’s just selfish enough to keep Missy in this universe for a little while longer. Her equal on every front. Her enemy in every match. Her friend since before time itself. She has a lot of atoning for, but the Doctor is no innocent either. Still, her hatred for the rest of her species runs deep to her core, and she knows Missy shares that core. Perhaps it’s what bonds them, when everything else is stripped away. A desperate hate for the rest of their kind, a longing need to defy every logic ever created by the posh, horrific Time Lords who thinks themselves gods.

She lifts her teacup to her lips again, frowning when she finds it’s gone tepid.

“We need her, old girl.” The Doctor speaks again when she stands, running an affectionate hand across the edge of the console. It warms beneath her fingers, hesitantly agreeing.

“There wouldn’t be much of a universe to save without her destroying it, after all.”

\- - - 

" _You're right. The view was worth it."_

_"Told you so."_

_"I'd stay here forever if I could."_

_"---we could. I mean. We don't have to go back."_

_"What, take to the stars?"_

_"Yeah. We'll steal a TARDIS from the nursery, and run."_

_"All the stars?"_

_"A thousand of them, if you want."_

_"Promise?"_

\- - - 

Missy wakes.

It’s slow, because the weights on her eyelids are back. Things are murky, hazy, and she feels as if she’s climbed out of hell itself (the proper one, not her matrix one). Memories try to surface in the black stillness of her mind, but it aches and there is pain the more she tries to pull them. Pain is good, pain she can do. Pain means she’s alive. 

Being warm is a new sensation; she hadn’t frozen in the vault, but it certainly hadn’t been the warmest. Space heaters had done the trick, and for a moment she can’t remember a time waking without her toes or fingers freezing. She curls further in on herself, burrowing deeper beneath the blankets. Perhaps she’ll put off waking for a few moments longer.

Her mind was turning now, however, and not so easy to shut off. Rolling onto her side the Time Lady blinked once, twice, and begins to take in the dimly lit room around her. It isn’t the vault, as she’s already affirmed. It isn’t that stupid farmhouse either. She can feel a low hum as her eyes adjust and more of the room comes into proper view. TARDIS. A room. Her room. Her bed. 

Sentimental idiot.

Vaguely she wondered if the Doctor she remembers is a dream. The Doctor-Woman. What a copy-cat. 

She tested her limbs slowly, feeling them pull and ache when she stretches. Good. She’s put together, at least. Hasn’t lost anything. She can already piece together the general idea of what’s happened. She’d been nearly dead. Now she wasn’t. The Doctor was involved. It was old hat, really.

And yet, she can’t help but feel somehow grateful.

Oh, junior had done a number on her. The laser to the back had been the last straw in a very unnerving set of events that had ultimately pushed her to the edge. A bad influence, he’d been. Even when she had just started to earn the Doctor’s trust. She’d earned that outing, to prove herself, and while she knows deep in herself that she will never be what the Doctor considers good, she can at least try for some balance that will gain that favor back. Standing with him had been the goal, the idea, that moment because Missy isn’t stupid; she knows the Doctor. She knows the values carried in that big head, and didn’t need a speech to prove it. Missy had known then and there, back on that farm, where her loyalties had rested. While vault living hadn’t been preferable, if they’d made it out alive she would’ve stayed in that stupid cube for another nine decades to prove it. 

That had definitely all gone out the window. 

With some difficulties she wasn’t eager to admit to, Missy pushed herself up onto her elbows and then into a sitting position. Things were sore and she reeked of ash, soot, and something else – regeneration energy, she noted. It’s undeniable scent and feel of life thrumming through her veins was unmistakable. Which didn’t seem right, as the laser had been fortified to prevent that from happening.

Stupid, sentimental, Doctor.

Her Victorian garb missing, she resorted to the robe draped over the back of a chair that looked as if it hadn’t moved in the decades since she’d left it there. Oh, she hated this, feeling all out of sorts and too weak to do anything. She wore her clothing like armor and with the robe, it hardly seemed like enough to prevent a dent much less anything prominent. It made her feel vulnerable in a way she hadn’t felt in some time. 

Not to be deterred, however, Missy belted it firmly around herself and tried to swallow the feeling of her stomach in her throat. Part of her wished she’d simply regenerated fully; the pain would have been brief, and she could have already moved on to better things. Instead, she’d been left with an aching head and a dull ache along the length of her spine that made her unable to walk just quite right. Her body was still healing itself, fixing the damage done now that a touch of extra arton energy had boosted her own systems into high gear. 

Using the wall to keep her balance, Missy flung open the door to the corridor. The ship hummed beneath her feet, the grating digging into her skin on certain patches of the flooring. It all looked the same, though there were no other doors on this particular corridor.

“Cut me some slack today, pretty. I’ve just died.” She murmurs, leaning in to press her cheek to the wall. The cool metal felt wonders on her face, helping pull her further away from that dreadful abyss of sleep. Fatigue still lingered, but there were more important things on the agenda and Missy had intentions of completing them before she played Sleeping Beauty again. 

The TARDIS, however, seemed to take pity on the Time Lady. At the very least, was threatened she might start pulling wiring apart if she didn’t get her way – which, Missy quite frankly would. The hall shifted and she took a few more tentative steps. Her perception was still off, so keeping herself grounded proved difficult. She trailed along the hall with her hand against the wall, nails digging into the metal to keep herself balanced. 

She’d brought this on herself, truly. 

Desperation had settled in sometime during that second week in the farmhouse. With Potts still unconscious, the Doctor not speaking to her, and Junior blurring the lines between the pair of them, it had taken it’s toll. A sparse library kept her occupied for a few hours but beyond that, it felt like being trapped in that stupid vault again. Closed, cut off, and forcing her to reflect. She hadn’t cried, no, those tears hadn’t come, but she’d lashed out multiple times at Nardole and the furniture in her room. Nothing had been spared, and she’d sat among the splintered wood like a spoiled child. 

She did not deserve that.

She did not deserve the Doctor.

The sheer patience he held for her, hoping to change her or at the very least, bring her back to reality. But Missy had grounded herself in reality some time prior – but whatever he needed to sleep at night, she imagined. If locking her in a vault for a thousand years would do it, fine. So be it. Let Theta play the righteous hero. She would never measure up to him, not anymore. Not by his standards. How long she had spent trying to make him see that, even still trapped on that stupid farm. In the end, she’d taken matters into her own hands.

But he’d been right, of course. Always was. Some things needed to be stood up for.

Children would’ve burned on that farm.

She locked that thought in a box in her mind, shoved it into the darkest recesses, and threw away the key. That was not a road she was eager to travel just yet. Not now.

The console room had changed, but only slightly. She lingered in the doorway, scanning the room for the Doctor – she was bent low over the opposite side of the main hub, murmuring to herself as she poured over something Missy couldn’t quite see.

“Why?”

The Doctor’s head snaps up, and Missy could finally get a proper look at that face. The new one. Still those eyes, though. The eyes that held entire galaxies. The galaxies full of the stars they’d promised one another to visit. 

“You’re awake.” The Doctor shuffles toward her, wearing a look Missy associated with concern. Hands reached out and instinctively Missy drew back. The Doctor did too, realizing, brows furrowing as she took in Missy’s appearance.

“Why?” Missy demands in a sharper tone, finding her voice. Why didn’t you let me die?

“Because I realized what you meant. Too late, of course. I should’ve come sooner, I should’ve realized.” Thirteen looks troubled for a moment and Missy studies her (quite pleased that they’re rather similar in height now, and she isn’t looking up). “I died. On that ship. Same as you. Someone rescued you. I wanted to pay it forward.”

“Sentimental of you.” Missy drawled, and tried not to flinch at the hand the Doctor insisted on touching her with. It was a gentle touch, of course, trying to ascertain what remained of her injuries no doubt. Missy closes her eyes, breathing sharply when Theta's hand came to rest in the space between her hearts.

“Just checking.” She murmurs and was suddenly far closer than she’d been before when Missy cracked an eye open at her. This close, she could see every freckle that crossed those cheeks. A bit soft looking, for the Doctor, but there’s strength yet hidden there. 

“I’m alive, thanks for asking.”

“I know. I made sure of that.” She had the audacity to look pleased for a moment, before the ghost of a smile was gone. She dropped her hand away and Missy frowns in return, not realizing how much she immediately missed the warmth on her chest. 

“Can I get you anything?” The Doctor says next, and Missy’s frown didn’t go away.

“Tea, if you can make it properly now. Without seventeen sugars.”

The Doctor offers out a hand and Missy studies it with a critical eye for a long moment. How depraved her other Doctor had been of touch, shying away from it because he couldn’t trust her. Something had shifted now, and Missy feels a tad bit of hope blooming somewhere within that perhaps this Doctor would accept her, would return her friendship.

Missy silently accepts the offered hand. 

It’s the closest she can offer to a thank you right now, because she doesn’t think she could say the words without mucking them all about. The Doctor seems to accept this silent thanks, and heads off down another corridor with Missy trailing like a lost shadow behind.

“Biscuits too?”

“Will Jaffa cakes do?”

“I suppose.”


End file.
